#RSF expresses concern over Australian #Internet #censorship - IFEX
http://ow.ly/OKT0http://www.ifex.org/australia/2009/12/22/internet_censorship/
(RSF/IFEX) - In an open letter to the prime minister, RSF expresses
serious concern over the government's plan to introduce a mandatory
Internet filtering system to combat child sex abuse:
Open letter to Australian Prime Minister
The Hon Kevin Michael Rudd MP
Prime Minister
Canberra, Australia
Paris, 18 December 2009
Dear Prime Minister,
Reporters Without Borders, an organisation that defends free expression
worldwide, would like to share with you its concern about your
government's plan to introduce a mandatory Internet filtering system.
While it is essential to combat child sex abuse, pursuing this draconian
filtering project is not the solution. If Australia were to introduce
systematic online content filtering, with a relatively broad definition of
the content targeted, it would be joining an Internet censors club that
includes such countries as China, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Communications minister Stephen Conroy announced on 15 December that,
after a year of testing in partnership with Australian Internet service
providers (ISPs), your government intended to introduce legislation
imposing mandatory filtering of websites with pornographic, paedophile or
particularly violent content.
Reporters Without Borders would like to draw your attention to the risks
that this plan entails for freedom of expression.
Firstly, the decision to block access to an "inappropriate" website would
be taken not by a judge but by a government agency, the Australian
Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). Such a procedure, without a
court decision, does not satisfy the requirements of the rule of law. The
ACMA classifies content secretly, compiling a website blacklist by means
of unilateral and arbitrary administrative decision-making. Other
procedures are being considered but none of them would involve a judge.
Secondly, the criteria that the proposed law would use are too vague.
Filtering would be applied to all content considered "inappropriate," a
very slippery term that could be interpreted very differently by different
people. In all probability, filtering would target "refused
classification" (RC) sites, a category that is extremely controversial as
it is being applied to content that is completely unrelated to efforts to
combat child sex abuse and sexual violence, representing a dangerous
censorship option. Subjects such as abortion, anorexia, aborigines and
legislation on the sale of marijuana would all risk being filtered, as
would media reports on these subjects.
The choice of filtering techniques has not been clearly defined. Would it
be filtering by key-words, URL text or something else? And what about the
ISPs that are supposed to carry out the filtering at the government's
request? Will they be blamed, will they be accused of complicity in child
sex abuse if the filtering proves to be ineffective, as it almost
certainly will?
Your government claims that the filtering will be 100 per cent effective
but this is clearly impossible. Experts all over the world agree that no
filtering system is effective at combating this kind of content. On the
one hand, such a system filters sites that should not be affected (such as
sites about the psychology of child sexuality or paedophile crime news).
And on the other, it fails to filter targeted sites because their URLs
contain key-words that are completely unrelated to their content, or
because their content (photo and text) is registered under completely
neutral terms. Furthermore, people who are determined to visit such sites
will know how to avoid the filtering by, for example, using proxy servers
or censorship circumvention software or both.
The Wikileaks website highlighted the limitations of such as system when
it revealed that the ACMA blacklist of already banned websites contained
many with nothing reprehensible in their content. According to Wikileaks,
the blacklist included the Abortion TV website, some of the pages of
Wikileaks itself, online poker sites, gay networks, sites dealing with
euthanasia, Christian sites, a tour operator's site and even a Queensland
dentist's site.
The US company Google has also voiced strong reservations. Google
Australia's head of policy, Iarla Flynn, said yesterday: "Moving to a
mandatory ISP filtering regime with a scope that goes well beyond such
material is heavy handed and can raise genuine questions about
restrictions on access to information."
As regards paedophilia, the most dangerous places on the Internet are
websites offering chat and email services. So if this project were taken
to its logical conclusion, access to sites such as Gmail, Yahoo and Skype
would also have to be blocked, which would of course be impossible.
There are more effective ways to combat child pornography, including
tracking cyber-criminals online (by means of cookies, IP address
comparison, and so on), combined with police investigation into suspects
and their online habits. Why did your government end the programme
launched by the previous government, which made free filtering systems
available to Australian families? This procedure had the merit of being
adapted to individual needs and gave each home the possibility of
shielding its children from porn.
A real national debate is needed on this subject but your communications
minister, Stephen Conroy, made such a debate very difficult by branding
his critics as supporters of child pornography. An opportunity was lost
for stimulating a constructive exchange of ideas.
We also regret the lack of transparency displayed by your government as
regards the tests carried out in recent months using procedures that have
been kept secret. Your government paid some 300,000 Australian dollars to
ISPs to finance the tests. Australian taxpayers have a right to be given
detailed information about the results.
Finally, you must be aware that this initiative is a source of a concern
for your compatriots. In a recent Fairfax Media poll of 20,000 people, 96
per cent were strongly opposed to such a mandatory Internet filtering
system, while around 120,000 Australians have signed a petition against
Internet censorship launched by the online activist group GetUp. The
withdrawal of this proposal would therefore satisfy public opinion as well
as prevent a democratic country from introducing a system that threatens
freedom of expression.
I thank you in advance for the consideration you give to our recommendations.
Sincerely,
Jean-François Julliard
Reporters Without Borders
Secretary-General
Source
http://www.ifex.org/australia/2009/12/22/internet_censorship/
Reporters Without Borders
47, rue Vivienne
75002 Paris
France
rsf (@) rsf.org
Phone: +33 1 44 83 84 84
Fax: +33 1 45 23 11 51
